Mail Bag: For the love of storms

Recently, I received a lovely, self-deprecating question from someone asking if (perhaps? … maybe?…) their love of thunderstorms could be explained by evolution, like how (perhaps? … maybe?) the comforting feeling they feel during storms, especially at night, comes (perhaps? … maybe?) from a time when our ancestors were given a safe reprieve from predation?

Here’s the answer I dashed off to them…

Dear [Evolutionary Wonderer],

I share your love of science and how enjoyable and even thrilling it feels to relate to our hominin (a.k.a. past human) ancestors. I think your love of science is probably why you say about your question that “it’s probably a dumb idea that has no bearing on reality”. I take this to mean that you sense that there is a possibility that your imagination about our ancestors during storms having something to do with how you feel during storms may only be that: your imagination and not science. What I mean is, I think your question is probably, actually, “Is this science?” Well, let’s think about how we could investigate your idea with science.  

Bones and teeth and stone tools and fire pits and all of what little preserves of the ancient past is not going to help us at all. Even if everything preserved, that complete material record of the past would not tell us if our ancestors felt as you wonder they felt during storms, and for reasons you’ve imagined (instead of, say, because they can stop worrying about clean drinking water thanks to all this new clean drinking water, or because it sounds a lot like when they were fetuses and that was a safe worry-free time in their lives, etc.). 

So, maybe we would be tempted to look to other animals to see if any of them share your feelings and for reasons you imagine our ancestors might. But no matter what we find out there among other species, like other primates (note: Jane Goodall recounts chimpanzee “rain dances” that you might want to look into!), no matter how many other species are also comforted by storms (if a scientist could elucidate such a feeling), let alone because they mean a temporary time-out from predation (if a scientist could elucidate such a reason), that’s still not evidence of how our hominin ancestors felt, let alone why they felt the way they felt. 

So it’s impossible to know if what you’re experiencing is also what our ancestors experienced. If they did, it’s impossible to know if it’s for reasons you imagine. And then, to top it all off (here’s the kicker), it’s impossible to know if what you’re experiencing is due to that experience being innately carried into the future from our ancestral past. It’s been a mistake in the (relatively short, so far) history of science to assume that everything we share with animals is innate. They develop in context just like we do. As scientists increasingly appreciate, animals are more brilliant and developmentally complex than our scientific forebears assumed. “Instinct” is an outdated term now because it assumes too much without evidence. Defaulting to the belief that specific feelings and the behaviors that ensue could be inherited from our ancestors isn’t really very typical among scientists. What you’ve rightly sensed as a challenging question for science is why the field of evolutionary psychology is so criticized (though you wouldn’t know it from pop culture where it is embraced enthusiastically).  

Nature brings on what some people call the “numinous” which is often used to describe religious or spiritual feelings but works just as well, I think, for describing how nature, like storms, can tap us directly into our very real physical connection across space-time to everything that is alive now and that ever lived. I live for that numinous feeling! Our understanding of science can give us that feeling and be part of the satisfaction we find in making meaning of our lives as earthlings, but that does not make that feeling or those imaginings, themselves, science. We should all feel free to keep reveling in those connections, to keep relating to our ancestors, like you do… while also valuing and doing science, which is something else entirely … even if its discoveries feed those feelings! For fueling your imagination and keeping you linked to nature across space-time, especially to our ancestors, I highly recommend novels like Claire Cameron’s called The Last Neanderthal.

Thanks for your question. I enjoyed imagining along with you,

Holly 

Source: http://ecodevoevo.blogspot.com/2026/10/mail-bag-for-love-of-storms.html